If you're interested in Stormgate, here I cast it - www.youtube.com/@RTSCasts Stormgate vs StarCraft 2 multiplayer comparison - ua-cam.com/video/4xs0RUb9XiI/v-deo.htmlsi=ruoJROXDRz87XzRx
The game IS dull and boring in its core. The skeleton IS the issue, not the meat. I can give you like 10 reasons why. I want you to think about it one more time. What is "bones" ?
In my opinion, the game takes too much inspiration from SC2 in ways in which it shouldn't take much inspiration, and it doesn't take enough inspiration in ways in which it should. The races are a straight up copy paste in terms of vibe and very inspired in design too, but they failed to capture the uniqueness of the original 3 races. The new protoss like race feels cheesy just like protoss, but doesn't feel good to play in the sense that you don't feel like you're outsmarting the enemy with your cheese, you just feel like you're cheesing for the sake of doing so. It's the difference between spamming a 50/50 in a fighting game vs. spamming a single move. Both are a kind of cheesing, but only one requires you to be kind of engaged in what you're doing. The Infernal race just doesn't feel like Zerg at all, and it doesn't have to, but if you're clearly making it look like Zerg, don't trick us Zerg fans. The mist isn't even a hundredth of the fun that creep was and it doesn't feel a millionth as good to spread. The feeling just isn't there, you don't feel like you're corrupting that zone so that your little ugly creatures can excel in it because it's their environment now, you just feel like "Ok now I get a buff in this zone, got it". The terran like race, which in my experience is the one that took the most inspiration from SC2, is just an easy to get into, but complex to branch out race, just like Terran. Doesn't feel unique at all. All of this and I haven't even mentioned the designs on the characters, which are a whole'nother conversation about how bad they can be in some cases... Game doesn't feel as fluid as SC2, doesn't feel unique in any department and honestly I just think this was the nail in the coffin of RTS's. I'll also say that elevating Frost Giant and Stormgate on the "RTS Savers" pedestal wasn't a good move, not by us fans and not by FG themselves.
The fact they actually released this game to the public in this state and charged money for it is insulting. Stormgate is feeling like a straight up scam at this point.
@@TravisHowrish-v2c I gotta say I've been further from that opinion than I am now, but the constant support and making the community feel heard is kind of reassuring about the scam possibility. But yeah, I get what you mean, hearing us doesn't do shit if they don't act on it
That 50/50 vs single move thing falls into the category of being “interactive”. Its not fun to play broken top 1 characters because there isnt much interaction vs something more towards mid/high tier Completely right in what you are saying but just digging deeper into it. As a fighting game player, its boring af when your character isnt very interactive. Literally dropped strive because ram was braindead
Making a unique RTS game isn't bad, but however, making a unique RTS game in a time where there are already established RTS games in a niche genre is like trying to get blood from a stone.
One thing is they advertised it as a “next gen social” RTS, which it does do some cool things, but I wouldn’t call it next gen (yet, might be in the future) as well as lacking pretty much every social feature, as well as a small character limit in in-game chat messages.
The simplest answer is often the most accurate. People left immediately because the game is poor on all fronts. It’s DOA. They had to have run out of money and pushed this out raw product with heavy handed monetization, thinking they could hide under a goodwill early access tag.
Basset I think that you fumbled this one, there is much valid criticism for SG like performance, unit clarity, path finding, global mm being forced on everyone, creeps being more valuable than expanding, uninspired graphics/unit designs, ttk being too high, sound effects being atrocious and many many more things, do I want SG to fail? NO if anything I want SG to be such a massive success that it would force other triple AAA studios to come back and make rts games but every time I am playing SG I am asking myself why play this instead of sc2 and I really can't find a reason at it's current state.
@@erfarkrasnobay a statement like that glosses over so much nuance. It sux that you can't be transparent as a game company and not be eating so much 💩. All they wanted was a feedback pipeline to make the best RTS they could. It was a naive plan prbly, time will tell. The way they take the criticism and adapt the game to the art, story and everything else around it, and have active Reddit and Discord community, it's really exciting to be a part of. I don't think it's helpful to the game if it gets bashed like that from a high level player. It's cool to say, it's not ready yet, I'll play it when it's better, but saying it's not good helps no one and it's not honest in my opinion. Grubby even made another hour long video essay since, describing all the sub-genres of RTS and how he doesn't like most of them, and he's trying to figure out what it is he even wants from an RTS 😅 He's really doing a whole high horse charade sometimes, but I still love Grubby 😆
@@Broockle The fact that an opinion "doesn't help" doesn't make it dishonest. The devs keep saying they have no plan to change the art style. And apart from literally changing The functionality of most units, I don't see how this game can surpass sc2 (a 15 year old game) even after every issue is ironed out. When your game brings very little new to the table and is just a mix of existing games (unlike Battle Aces, Beyond All Reason etc.), you HAVE to show improvement over the source. Otherwise what's the point?
@@habarvaz "The fact that an opinion "doesn't help" doesn't make it dishonest." Didn't say that. I think it's irrefutable that Stormgate is incredibly promising. Saying it's "bad" doesn't imply that it's "not good yet", it implies that it has nothing of value to give. And that is just false. They literally revamped Amara's design last week. Or what problem do you have with the art style now? SC2 would have been a golden goose if it were open source. The amount of games that people could make, the RTS explosion we could have had. But no body except the truest of fans use the SC2 engine to make anything. Such as Azeroth Reborn, it's made by one guy who runs a patreon. SC2 had incredible promise but it never took off, especially now that Activision basically keeps the rights in a drawer in a basement somewhere. Essentially SC2 is unattainable. Now with Stormgate and Snowplay we have another shot at this. If we can actually have a useable modern RTS engine out in the world for people to dev with that would be incredible. Vert few indie games devs make RTS cause of the insane technical standard an engine has to reach to be running efficiently on potatoes. Stormgate itself will also be pretty awesome in it's own right. While 1v1 is fun and all, I'm really gonna be in it for the 3v3 and coop modes. I'm very much looking forward to that reveal next year. We'll also get our first looks at the editor. Hype.
I don't think the problems with Stormgate are the community's fault. The community was very positive when it was announced. As more and more information came out, the community's opinions steadily soured. "I don't like the cartoony style, but hopefully the gameplay is good" was the general thought for a while now. This criticism has been around for ages, and it's not been taken to heart. They started off by making it sound like this was next-gen tech. Then the pathing is worse than SC1. So they update the pathing and make it somehow even worse. This isn't a problem with community feedback. It's a broken game with a good PR team. Now that the PR team can't sell it anymore, the game is dying.
The art style in this game just drives me insane. The bizarre character proportions, the stiff hair, the bulging eyes, the uninspired units that look like cheap kids toys from the dollar store. It is repulsive to look at.
dude facts did anyone watch the video where a guy forgot his chanel name brakes down all the flaws of the game sound video gameplay story and coop and shows how shit the game is when you look at it dogs running around in circles sound balancing issues missing sound effects graphical issues and the list continues
dude they are panicing since there funds are running out imo think they didnt understand what an undertaking making a tripple a rts would be now that daddy blizard isnt footing the bill you are screwed frostgiant
@@Dragonborn1178everyone needs to calm down. I have no memory of some AAA promise. It would be ridiculous to believe anyone who would even say that. The game is fine for a fledgling independent studio. Gamers are freaking out because they have expectations worse than shareholders about what a game should be like. I really don't get why people are freaking out about this game not being what they thought.
@@thatwildginger5423 uh homie, people are freaking out because the lies frost giant has told has come to light. They lied and said they have the funds to make it to full release. They dont, theyre actually so broke they had to take out a loan. Deep dive into the financial side of things and you can see they need an act of God to make it. They're broke, no one is playing their game, no one is willing to risk more capital into them.
What got me frustrated about this game was the lack of creativity. It's just like they smashed starcraft, warcraft and diablo together and called it a day.
From the moment it was revealed, every single SC2 content creator acted like Stormgate would cure cancer and end world hunger, to the point it started to seem a little sus, while all criticism was dismissed. I didn't see it, to me it looked bland, uninspired and had none of the qualities that made me fall in love with SC2. They tried so hard to make the next RTS e-sport that they forgot to make it fun. There's nothing in SG that makes me go 'I want to play this, this unit looks awsome to play with' and it doesn't seem like there will be. I'm glad you brought up AoM because that game does the exact opposite: completely unbalanced OP stuff everywhere with absolute chaos all around. And it's been the most fun I've had with RTS since early WoL. There are some deeper mechanics in there for competitive play but the core of the experience is pure, silly fun. I can throw meteors at your base while scorpion men kill all your villagers, or I can...stutter step not-Marines, I guess?
I have had to uninstall AoM for the forseeable future because it was wrecking my sleep schedule. That, to me, is the highest praise I can give a game lol.
An important thing to realize about sc2 content creators is they stand to benefit financially if a new RTS hits the scene and brings in a massive audience. Even sub-consciously they want the game to succeed because their viewers could go up by 10x if a super popular RTS came along.
@@Statleburgercurious why many of them who heavily promoted SG haven't or have barely shown AoM then. A game that is everything Stormgate wishes it was.
@@mrcookies409 microsoft didn't play people to play aom is why. Frost giant reached out for sponsors to try and lure in the pro scene. It didnt work. money wasted.
No future, was hopeless game since the moment devs started to share some info about it (even before gameplay trailer) Still some sc2 PRO GAMERS continued to say smth like " Ah did you see sc2 beta? it was also worse than release" In the end we have a trash game with no future (again, was obvious from the beginning) . Lags, bugs, boring, raw, failed hybrid of many games (better if they focused on making like 80-90% of stuff from concrete game, be it sc2, than mixing everything to get a cocktail with fish and milk)
I had high hopes for this game, but there is just nothing there for me right now. I was already iffy with the art style but figured if the gameplay was good I could over look it, but every single time I loaded up the game, something else would come up that I just did not like. Key binds, pathing, art style, sounds, tool tips, wait times, story, etc. it all just adds up to, why am I even playing this? Like, who is this game made for? I thought it was for RTS fans, specifically SC2 players past and present but the more I look the more I think this game is made for children.
That’s my question too. Who is this game made for ? Why would anyone play this ? I just purchased Age of Mythology Retold and am having a blast. The game plays great, has interesting mechanics, cool unit and faction design, and most importantly it’s FUN.
dude rts games from 20 years ago were better like kanes wrath that still gets community support to this day as well as tournaments as well as generals zero hour fuck stormgate
As a backer, here is my opinion on what made the EA launch fail. 1) The developers set the expectations too high before launch and had to backtrack and set up WIP signs as a response to the very mixed feedback on the game's content. 2) It didn't have polished content besides 1vs1 that is also missing a lot of units. It's clear that the game has put more focus on 1vs1 so far at the expense of the rest, so the devs need to bring the other content up to par and even surpass it since Campaign, Co-op, Custom Games, and 3vs3 are what will make or break this game. The hardcore 1vs1 audience only survives on the back of the casual audiences that like to play other modes, since 1vs1 is not what most people play in an RTS. 3) Campaign was undercooked and rushed out the door for EA launch. "The Stand" mission where you guard the drill as you get swarmed is by far the best designed mission while the rest are either okay or just bad by being too short, having poor pacing, having unpolished gameplay ideas, and/or very poor presentation like graphics, story, voice acting, etc. 4) There is currently no hook that makes Stormgate unique from StarCraft 2 or WarCraft 3 whether it's Co-op, Campaign, or 1vs1. The game needs to make bold choices and explore new territories for it to get an identity that is distinct from those games. The 3vs3 mode having Heroes and new types of map objectives at least sound like new ideas being explored, so I am looking forward to that. 5) Graphical presentation is all over the place, with most of it being pretty bad if you play the Campaign. Character designs, 2D character portraits, placeholder UI, in-game cutscenes, and more are very underwhelming. At least with Amara's newly teased character model it makes me more hopeful about the art direction being salvageable, especially since the human models and the female ones specifically looked really bad at launch. They also have to address the unit designs that are pretty underwhelming and make playing each faction feel cool and thematic. The only reason I played Zerg in StarCraft 2 was because of the look and feel of the faction, so the devs need to focus on the cool factor before making it all feel fair and balanced. 6) The game lacks replayability if you don't play 1vs1. There isn't a good reason to revisit the Campaign after finishing it on Brutal (which can be finished in one sitting). Co-op is not fleshed out enough yet to make you come back besides doing higher difficulties. If you've played 20-30 hours you will have seen most of what the game currently offers. 7) Finally, the game lacks social features. This was a massive problem when StarCraft 2 launched and the problem is even worse in Stormgate by not even having online lobbies to talk to other people. The game needs to allow players to build communities for people to want to stay and play. If the patch content is consistent and well received there is still hope for the game to succeed, but it is going to be a massive uphill battle to live up to the legacy of the older Blizzard RTS games.
ya the game is shit at launch look at what beyond all reason and godswarn did bar focused on its multiplayer first to have a good community supporting its foundation then you add story godswarn is a 2 person dev team and the game is tuns better then stormgate its just sad a entire team of like 40 or 50 people cant make things better and its now taking them months to patch stuff ya fuck that even a game like 9 bit armies plays better
I appreciate your detailed, thoughtful analysis of where it fumbled its launch. The thing I love most about the RTS community is just the elevated maturity, respect, and solidarity (odd trolls aside). I feel like the community has become just a little more toxic since the SG EA release, and I really hope it remembers what makes it so awesome to love RTS. It’s nice to see comments that are still real and critical, but also thoughtful and not extremist.
"I have a strong feeling that Stormgate is the most underrated, poorly understood game that has been released recently..." It's badly optimized (although the devs will just tell you your PC sucks), the pathing is ABYSMAL, and above all else it's just not fun. I'm more than willing to give the game a chance in the future, but it just sucks to play right now, and they want us playing NOW. They released the game NOW. They're charging money NOW. I don't want to play it now. What am I underrating? What am I not understanding? I'm legitimately curious. Show me where the fun is.
as i said in my comment on here godswarn a game with 2 fucking people working on it got 4v4 working and the game looks nicer then stormgaate that game is also in early access
Like 90% of these content creators have been paid by Frost Giant to make content promoting them. It's so difficult to tell. The fact that Frost Giant are out here swindling people and then victim blaming because people aren't running 4090s and then they've just flat-out made shit up like "Unreal is difficult to work with." - Unreal is the leading game engine for AAA games, Hollywood movies and shows, and any indie developer can pick it up. Pathing is not hard. Lighting is easy. Making stuff look good in Unreal is the lowest-hanging fruit imaginable. Nanite and Lumen are so well-optimized at this point that they're allowing a GTX1080 to display stuff it could not when it released 8 years ago. Honesty goes a very long way in games. That's why studios like Larian have succeeded.
@@smantie I wouldn't go that far. If a creator isn't bashing the game, it's likely because they don't want to burn any bridges; fairly understandable to me, but I can understand the sentiment of feeling swindled. The game looks and plays like garbage, so the devs blaming people for not having good enough rigs is absolutely ridiculous, yeah. I've used Unreal in the past, and I wouldn't say it's "easy" to make a fully functional RTS with good performance. However, that was their job, and they failed.
@@unrighteous8745 That's a fair assumption, but FG sent out a ton of "care packages" to content creators and asked them to make content for them. Some creators said these were paid, some have denied it, but it REALLY looks like many Creators were compensated to give posts about a year ago saying that they were excited for SG. Heck, they even did this with HuskySC who became a pariah in the scene. It isn't easy to make an RTS in any engine, but AI pathing is super easy. They're not reinventing the wheel here, but they are repeatedly making mistakes that the games industry solved 20yrs ago. Some of my colleagues are veterans of Westwood Studios and worked on TibSun and RA2 and more, and have been looking at SG. Last year at DH one just said to me "What the heck are they doing showing this?" and one could argue that it was better THEN than now.
They should have focused on the solo campaign, just like SC2 wings of liberty, then the multiplayer could be just some basic units, exactly as it happened with SC2 with each expansion, but here you are actually building the game one race at the time.
That is a fantastic idea (and I am totally a campaign-first kind of guy), but the problem is that a campaign is typically made late in RTS development. You basically have to develop all the same assets that you would for 1v1, and then on top of that add an AI, tons of additional abilities and progression systems, cinematics, voice acting, etc. It’s a huge undertaking. It makes sense that 1v1 would be the most polished at this stage. I think their mistake was releasing the campaign this early. They should have just opened EA with the 1v1, and just hinted at story ideas to come. They could have slowly released lore videos introducing characters and factions and world-building. And then months down the line after some proper lore to add hype, boom, new campaign. Even just releasing the missions but withholding those awful looking cinematics would be better (less is more). Instead, we got what we got. They can still improve it, but at this point they’re doing damage control. I have hope, but I’m not putting my money into anything until they prove it’s worth it at this point.
I honestly don't see how COH3 release is similar to Stormgate. COH3 had 36k concurrent players on release, Stormgate had 5k. One month after launch, COH3 still had over 8k players, but Stormgate is at 0.4k (assuming F2P launch as the launch date). Also, companies behind COH and No Man's sky had other revenue streams and publishers, who could supply money when in dire need. Stormgate would have to raise funding externally, which is a really hard sell at this point. They need to pull a true miracle to survive until 1.0 and I am interested to see how this will pan out.
@@TravisHowrish-v2c Yeah, but I think they had no other choice. Frost Giant was running out of money fast (over $1M per month burn rate) so they made a big bet to release early and hope for the best. And this is the result.
I lost interest once I realized it was literally Diablo and starcraft mixed together aesthetically. I was hoping for something a little more than just demons versus Angels versus humans. Also The story is predictable. We're going to have another Kerrigan or arthas moment and the "Xelnaga wall" in one of the cinematics sent me
The comparison to SC2 alpha isn't great. SC2 alpha came over 15 years ago, when stuff like this was never seen, and everyone seeing it would have 100% liked to play it and would have enjoyed it. If you bring something new and exciting to the table, lack of polish is more easily forgiven. But when selling a product that will look extremely outdated even when finished, there is no reason to give it a second thought at this poor current state
“I overhyped this game”, and then just a few seconds later “I believe it can be the best RTS game ever”. You learned nothing. You made no real conclusions. This really is cope. The whole video rubbed me the wrong way, but bringing up No Man’s Sky - a proper, one payment (not f2p) game that was rushed because of publisher and which improved itself over 10 years without asking a single new penny from the players aside from the price of the game - was the last straw. You show no real understanding of the whole thing. This video is unpaid damage control.
I feel bad to all the people who financially supported this game. It's just an unfinished mess that was pushed out to Early Access because they needed more money. I hope Zero Space fares better.
I have ZeroHope it does Nah I kid I kid Zerospace will not have as many players on release, but it will probably have much better reviews Zerospaces problem is mainly that no one knows it exists, and so advertising is a must
ya that seems cool but people say some units are not ready grubby said its a bit unbalanced atm but you should also try godswarn that game is sick played last night
You cannot compare Stormgate to Sc2 alpha. Because Stormgate is not competing with a version of Sc2 from 2007, but with a version of Sc2, AoE4, AoE2, BAR, etc in 2024 Which would be fine if the game would have a soul or vision, but i do not see it at all, therefore i'm not going to invest into it. Good luck to them but, for every No Man's Sky there are 100 closed games. NMS is not the rule, but the exception
"The core problem is that the game still has little to offer at the moment, there is not much content to stick around......" Bruh .... and FrostGiant still managed to already charge $15 for 3 15 mins "not final" campaign missions? already $10 for each hero/ commander? and also, they have a $60, $30 and $20 "early access pack" in their steam page like wtf, and still marketing this trash as F2P?..... sorry, but this game is a massive failure, and a big blow to the RTS genre that is already dwindling.....
I did not like the graphics, whilst I don't play the game for the graphics/art, graphics/art certainly make me not play a game. People said if you dont like it, dont play it, well that is exactly what I did; Played 1 game in the beta as vanguard - won the game by stutter step; thing is when the marines or whatever they called were shooting, they never felt like they were shooting. In SC1 and SC2, then I went into battle with the marines, I could really feel it, with SG there is no feeling it.
we can accurately project their fiancials because their SEC reports are public through startengine, they turned to startengine and kickstarter because they never recieved a third round of venture capital. Thank you for the video you made some solid points but its publically available knowledge they only have enough runway until febuary
8:50 Game has 4 years of development, and half of year in the alpha/beta/EA if they still need time to show their vision and they can't do this with 6 missions of campaign lots of Coop and PvP time - then they have no vision.
@@iopklmification fyi warcraft 3 was developed in late 90 without 3d expiriance, with custom engine from the scratch within 4 years. Stormgate created 20+ years after, have 4 years of development of expirience team and not even comparable to warcraft 3 of release version in terms of quality and enjoyment. And this without even measuring amount of content for $60 backing. And if you disagree, take your badge of "top-500 stormgate player", it will cost $4.99 before taxes.
I called Stormgate the Undead Tier 3 melee unit back in June 2022, and got banned from the forums. Guess what? The most charitable view would be they are programmers with zero artistic vision. A less charitable would be... they are ideological and bad and greedy and callous. Acronym FGS. - Adûnâi
test - my comments disappears all the time... Let's reduce what I wrote: I am sorry to say it, but Stormgate is DoA. I had high hopes for the game and was positive about the team and what they were trying to do. But when I watched some people (e.g. Lowko + Grant) play the Campaign, I just couldn't believe what I saw. It is bad. So bad. My best analogy is the following: If Starcraft 1+2 + Warcraft 3 are Serral, then Stormgate is a Diamond Zerg. He tries to do the same things as Serral. Creepspread, injects, having queens in position, scouting, amry movement... But he is worse at everything. Nothing is even close to how Serral plays. Ever single thing Serral does, he does ten times better. And from what I have heard and seen from the Coop-Commander, it's not looking that much better. So they failed with the campaign, the coop commanders are boring- there is nothing that will give the game any decent player base. And without player base there won't be custom maps (like the tons of player generated content WC + SC has). Like I said, I am very sorry, but IMO the game is dead.
The game is 100 percent dead. Who exactly is going to play this game ? Who is this game for ? It does nothing that other RTS games don’t already do better.
Someone else said it, but I'll say it in my own words: While you don't always need to re-invent the wheel, we've been playing WC3 or SC2 for *decades.* Under those circumstances, people inevitably want a new & refreshing experience. SG feels like it doesn't do anything new (besides the quick macro UI,) or question it's long established conventions such as A-move. One video that stuck out in my memory (I don't remember the exact video) was a casting of 2 bronze players duking it out, and neither used A-move cuz they didn't know it exists. I've played a game called Beyond All Reason, and all the units attack AND move simultaneously. A-move still exists in that game, but their default nature of being able to attack and move at the same time felt much better to operate. The game also does so much other stuff that makes it easier to play without stripping the RTS identity too, with their eco system being the only real hurdle. Going back to Stormgate, I've only played 2 matches of PvP back in Steamfest, but what I already didn't like was that I got dog-rushed in 2 minutes in both my matches, while I was still preparing defenses. Something about lacking a starting defense aged poorly for me; I no longer enjoy games with these kinds of strats as a possibility. Co-op is fun for me personally, but it's got the problems others pointed out, AND it shares the same issue SC2 co-op has: Everyone only gets 1 expansion. I sincerely thought they were going to break that mold back when I played Steam NextFest and their one co-op map, but NOPE! The rest of the new maps only have one expo per player to take. Everyone said the same rhetoric about the campaign, I have nothing new to provide in that front. Also didn't they advertise Stormgate as a social RTS? Where's the social aspects? Where's lobby chat? Where's clans? I get this game is in early access, but for a game that touts about becoming a """SOCIAL""" RTS, you'd think they'd be finished or at least ready on release for the public. They're nowhere to be seen.
As a passionate SC2 fan and high tier backer of SG, I really, REALLY want the game to succeed. But I still feel so worried. Sure, they can fix a ton of stuff in one year - but every aspect of the game is in a 0-50% state. That makes me feel anxious about whether they will have the strength to go through with it. Also, consider this: We don't know what their financial background is, but you can bet that they calculated with financing the production of later campaign missions with incoming money. With a declining player base of < 1k players - RIP campaign. Damn, I hope this thing still somehow takes off.
as they say you backed the rong horse im gunna back godswarn on patrian since the game is fun feels finished in early access and has 2v2 3v3 and 4v4 stormgate is almost dead patching your game every 1 month and not more shows devs arnt quick to care about things
brother, we do know their financial situation. Its absolutely dire. They have admitted in a filing theyre unlikely to be able to continue. They need massive amounts of money no one is willing to give any. They told their investors to expect at least 40k concurrent players during ea. 40k. they often have just 200. They have gone around begging for more cash but no one is giving it. they even had to take out a loan to continue. Now no one else will loan them money as the revenue they generate per month is near 0. This is all public information due to them selling equity etc. its why so many people are upset, frost giant has lied and lied often. They dont have the cash to make it to 1.0 release even though they said they did. They have updated this in a legal document that they meant they could only make it to Early access.
@Ayanami3rd their public SEC filing among other documents. These are public. You can also see the times paying themselves a quarter million a year. If you don't know how to look for the sec filings, I can link them. But they're easily obtained
Reminds me of the original SC1 that was made in a modified wc2 engine. It looked bad that it was reworked for more than a year to become the classic we know and love. Perhaps they need to drastically revise.this.
I agree with everything you said. Only that the game was released in this state in contrast to starcraft 2 can also have reasons. Blizzard could simply afford to have games in development for so long with playtesting and co. Stormgate is certainly positioned differently and has to take the “paid early access” money and the playtesting by the players, for example.
Not really interested in Stormgate. Both the cartoony graphics and overwhelmingly lukewarm reviews let me know I don't want spend time on this game. I am however looking forward to Tempest Rising and ZeroSpace. Both of those look to have a lot of potential. Hopefully at least one of them turns out amazing. Maybe you can do a video about what's going on with those games.
The extremely cartoony graphics were such a bizarre choice. I will never understand what they were thinking when they designed this game. RTS games are SO much cooler when they have dark and gritty art and themes.
@Broockle not at all. It's referring to the idea that everyone gets a pat on the back and a participation trophy, rather than holding people to a high standard and being accountable for the quality of their work.
@@DarkArchon212 hmm Where do we see this? That is not what's happening at Frost Giant guys. The amount of 💩 they get to eat from reviews and critics is huge. Tho this is what they kind of wanted. They wanted the feedback quickly to adjust quickly cause they themselves admitted that in spite of all their experience, they're not sure what the next great RTS should be like. That's why they made these early builds and were more transparent than studios usually are at this stage. They are absolutely not illusioning themselves that they're game is amazing already. It still needs a ton of work.
I agree, but HOWEVER, making a good, unique and successful real-time strategy game in a time where there are established RTS games in a niche genre, is like trying to get blood from a stone.
No, you do not get it. The game is bad, like atrociously bad. You recognized it yourself you were overhyped. It is not a game per say, it is a a soul-less PRODUCT, a poorly executed fan-service where the devs think they know better and their customer are dumb. It has no identity, no vision, no proposition, nothing next-gen or ground breaking and now it does not even have an audience. They said they target the Blizzard RTS fans, fans who are now fathers, married, etc and they thought the good move was to set a child-like visual identity... I would only recommend this game to a 3 years old to discover easily the basis of RTS. The units do resemble the toys of new-born babies indeed and the mechanics can easily be understood by any mentally impaired person on earth. Yeah they are that interesting... What a scam! The only thing left is the attention economy around the game on UA-cam and social networks.
As a campaign guy first, I have hope but I’m also skeptical. I think their mistake was releasing the campaign this early. They should have just opened EA with the 1v1, and just hinted at story ideas to come. They could have slowly released lore videos introducing characters and factions and world-building. And then months down the line after some proper lore to add hype, boom, new campaign. The premise to me sounds awesome. Humans fighting for survival in a post-apocalyptic earth ruled by demons (and about to become stomping grounds for a celestial-hell war)? That is awesome! You could have Last of Us but with demons and machine guns! But we know nothing about it. And what little they’ve shown is just soured by underbaked, early-draft presentation. Even just releasing the missions but withholding those awful looking cinematics would be better (less is more). Instead, we got what we got. They can still improve it, but at this point they’re doing damage control. I have hope, but I’m skeptical. And I’m too poor to pay $10.00 for three underbaked story missions.
In very rare case in g.industry, we can see a comeback games, like NMS, or Amongus, but it is very rare cases. And most of game near death, can't get this change, due the many reason.
For me the shittyness of the campaign just ruins the whole experience. IDC that much about the multiplayer and I was really excited to see the world and characters of stormgate, hell they managed to make the Infernal LAME with how they are in the campaign. They're not even as intimidating as Zerg in SC2. In fact as dumb as the storyline in SC2 is, stormgate is so much worse it makes me appreciate how much better SC2 is by comparison. I get that it's an INDIE game but why do RTS games in the early 2000s and 90s look more appealing with their graphics than stormgate? The game unironically trying to tell a serious story and having cinematic cutscenes with how horrible and lacking the animation is, is just laughable. They COULD improve the graphics later, but even then that's not gonna salvage the fact that its' characters so far suck, the dialogues bad, and it's a knock-off of WC3's human campaign with less interesting gameplay. At least if nothing else SC2 has higher production and more varied gameplay mechanics in its campaign. Could the game get better? As far as multiplayer goes yes, though i think at this point singleplayer is a lot cause, which shouldn't be a surprise given how much of the devs focus has been on competitive play. The fact that MOST of its coverage has been from SC2 veterans and pros is already a red flag. I feel like they already fucked up just doing that, didn't SC2 prove that over-emphasizing competitive just alienates most gamers in RTS games? Most gamers aren't gonna sit down and watch game tournaments let alone for RTS games, or take the time and practice to learn 1v1 and grind on the ladder the same way simpler games like league can encourage them to do that. SC1 had a strong campaign, which helped maintain its legacy among even casual gamers.
I don’t have a lot of smart things to say other than - I was very excited to hear that former StarCraft devs were pouring their heart and soul and expertise into a new RTS, and was just so underwhelmed by the early access that I hurried and deleted, pretending like I didn’t see anything… hoping it would get better and more polished and more fleshed out and have a stronger launch in the near future. If it’s true that money has dried up, then maybe we simply will never get to see that polished game… Counter argument on polish though. Why is Deadlock so fun - and early access, and not polished?! Valve did something right with the core mechanics and the way they talked about the release… I see Deadlock as having a very good chance of success. So what’s the difference?!
and I think this is the clue - with starcraft, broodwar, warcraft 3, you got hooked with the campaign and when it finished, you wanted more, so you went customs and multiplayer, to kind of craft your own story (sc2 to a bit lesser extent, cos it already had a strong competetive scene). First you have seen awesome battles and meaty units in single player, each unit was introduced with a backstory, so you just naturally wanted to make cool things with cool tools. Here the SG creators assumed they have the same foundation SC2 had, so they can go straight into esports.
As far as multiplayer goes, it just feels like we're retreading problems that SC2 already cleared up. I mean in theory the infest mechanic is interesting but in practice there's a reason why SC2 ultimately re-designed units like the infestor, BL, and swarm-host: because free units do NOT fit in a competitive RTS game and mess with the eb and flow of how army trades usually work. That's nothing to say about some of the stupid design choices like allowing vanguard to build an expansion in seconds, or allowing them to activate overcharge to make their workers borderline unkillable (ummmmm photon overcharge was cringe guys really we're STILL doing bases that defend themselves????). Same with workers exploding, if your army is out of position and you get harassed, you SHOULD...you SHOUUUULD BE PUNISHED FOR IT not get stupid get-out-of-jail free cards where you can turn your workers into banelings, which creates this BIZZARE dynamic of having to sacrifice workers just to add damage to your army because them and magmadons are your only consistent burst damage. Imagine having to waste drones in SC2 to fight terran when you need to maintain your economy LOOOOOL it's not fitting in a competitive space. Also granted they have adjusted the cost of units recently but man the fact that they went on for MONTHS with infernal units being expensive despite marketing them as the stormgate equivalent of Zerg and CLEARLY being objectively worse in value than vanguard units was crazy. It seriously makes them look incompetent for not instantly noticing how fucked that was from a design perspective. There was a reason 150 minerals in Starcraft got you 6 zerglings, but for a long time 150 luminate gave you 3 fiends that don't even have crackling upgrades, and brutes were worse than lancers despite being 50 luminite more expensive. The math was not mathing devs pls.
Love the videos, is it possible for you to loop SC1 Terran music or Stronghold Crusader soundtrack while you're discussing? We're losing the Zillenials ty
To me it is simple, I enter from year to year into SC2 Rank and I find match... if there is no people playing Stormage in some time it will be almost dead. I won't start a war about how people overhyped it and such... but I will say soundly why most pro did it at least, and it was because the need money, they thought if Stormgate was huge they could move into it from StarCraft2 and make money again because living from SC2 is not really profitable, but even for them the game didn't hit as they wanted. The most I tried StormGate the most I apreciate now StarCraft2
Where the devs failed was to assume gamers understand what early access means and did not properly communicate the state of development. It's very simple: Stormgate is YEARS (not one but multiple) away from release quality. In this state you wouldn't even get an announcement for a Blizzard game.
I've been playing StarCraft 2 for many years, and I still log on from time to time. The gameplay feels fluid, and the art style and lore behind it are incredible. However, I’ve never been a big fan of the SC2 storyline, especially when compared to StarCraft and Brood War. That said, two things immediately turned me off is the art style and the story. I know it might sound odd to bring these up in a competitive game, but for me, it’s the world-building the art and lore that motivates me to play competitively. I’ve tried other competitive games, and my intrinsic motivation to improve always comes down to the same reason. I want to get better because the game’s world looks cool, or the story is rich, making me want to explore it further. In contrast, my initial experience with Stormgate left me underwhelmed. The game’s aesthetics immediately felt too toy like, with everything looking overly silly for the serious story they’re trying to tell. It reminds me of the art style in League of Legends or Diablo 3. For a Demons vs. Angels theme, a grittier, more realistic art direction would be much more fitting. I personally would love a grittier story/art style to likes of SC BW or the current asthetics of D4, just in RTS form. I’m also not a fan of random mobs in RTS games. While it works for MOBA games, here it feels like an extra, uninspired task. On a related note, the game’s pacing reminds me of Dota and LoL everything feels tanky. Instead of having an army of infantry supported by tanky units, it feels like every unit is too durable, much like in League. That style works in MOBA games because of the leveling system, where accumulating gold and experience points matters in a fast-paced, MMO-like way. But here, it feels out of place. The sound design is another aspect that leaves much to be desired. As Storyteller mentioned, Frost Giant Studios overhyped the game, claiming to be the spiritual successor to games like SC and WC. I'm still hopefull that a new RTS will come along, but I feel this one just isn't it.
Devs are just scamming players for your money. micro transaction on an early access game is the most scammy thing a developer can do and it is just plain stupid to give them the money they want.
Yep. Like 60-70% of kickstarters, this thing was a scam. They're pushing out a turd to say they delivered something, (so they don't get sued), but there's no heart in it. Just a rip off of StarCraft. Why not do a different RTS? "Space Marines" has been done to death, and if you're just going to repeat a trope, you better have an interesting spin. But they don't. It really is SC2 at home. But in this case SC2 would have been cheaper for your parents to get.
good points. yeah way too much hype leaves folks disappointed. really tho, RTS is hard to make good because you need people behind it, a player base. other genres not as much unless we are thinking of MMORPGs like the recent fallout. some players but not many. same with red dead redemption 2 online. the online mode is just collecting achievements with friends that amount to nothing. so grinding a game with no future is only worth it if you are having fun. so when i hear folks complaining about sc2 or even stormgate, i ask myself, am I having fun with this game? if the answer is, not today because i'm losing, then the game isn't right for me.
COH has always been release game, give it a year and it will be finished, it is how they have literally done it for 3 games now, that should not be a surprise to anyone.
I think the main problem is lack of communication and understanding by the playerbase. The game needed to do better to say it's in development and they want to build it with the community piece by piece at every stage so they can make the best game. I don't care what anyone says I game development iterative building with the community is the best way to build a game when there's so many different opinions and styles to consider. They release the game early access and the campaign is undercooked, there's missing units, missing sound, graphics are not finished, modes are not all in the game, hotkeys are still locked somewhat, which is not a problem because it's in development but t he players wanted the finished game and rejected their iteration approach and now the game is suffering for it. They could have kept campaign hidden until next year or released it to a small number for NDA testing, so Frost Giant also misunderstood what the playerbase actually wanted. But the problem with that is if they did keep it closed down we wouldn't see the game until 2026 most likely and it might be a worse game for that. I still see the potential in it because I use linux and I don't want to download battlenet and play starcraft, I want to play something similar but new and stormgate is that game outside of every RTS out there, this one is the closest. But with all the doomers around and negativity, the lies being spread and the lack of understanding about in development games and being influx if the community continues to reject the game then it's over, and we'll be playing starcraft 2 forever. There has been changes though, they've updated their roadmap and are doing things backwards as a response to the community negativity, they're releasing 3v3 but locking it under NDA because it's going to be in an early stage just like campaign and they don't want the community to kill the game from this point, but that's exactly what will happen, even though we got a massive graphics update that makes it look night and day and a huge balance patch that's changed a lot, mind you it's technically only been over a month since the game released, were on good pace, but it's not up to the developers if the game will succeed or not since they're doing things fine in my opinion, just give them feedback and time to grow, but if the community and player base reject it then that's the will of the players and we'll not be playing this game once it shuts down, sad really...
Unfortunately I feel the damage is done with Stormgate, the other games you mentioned CoH, Age of Mythology, event SC2 in alpha was that they already had a fanbase and they had the franchise. Stormgate was heavily relying on the SC community jumping onto it but if anything it's just bolstered SC2 and BW. Unless SC2 suddenly just closes down I can't see SG doing much. It will be telling for if the next EWC has a stormgate tournament with big money, if it's just SC2 again, I can see SG closing shop pretty early on
Yeah, it is unbelievable how atrocious the campaign is. I halfway expected the devs to come out a day later to say: Haha, April Fools Joke, here is the real campaign. EVERYTHING sucks in the campaign, everything is done worse than in WC3 + SC1 + SC2. And not only stuff that costs money (like cinematics), dialogue, characters, story... Sound design, optics - everything is so bad, WC3 and SC1 was doing a better job.
That honestly does not sound bad on paper. I love those Campaigns, but the problem is these campaign missions feel way weaker than those Blizzard missions. Less creative and retreading on old ground. They don’t add anything new to the formula the way SC2 missions seemingly did so consistently. Beyond the terrible writing and story.
For me, it's too much like WC3 for Starcraft fans, and too much like Starcraft for WC3 fans. It tries to be everything, but ended up being unlikeable for everyone unfortunately. I really hoped it would be a true next gen RTS title, but alas, back to SC2 for me, and hope Microsoft picks that back up, or invests heavily into a SC3. Neither will happen, but as it is, nothing else is scratching that itch
my favorite game for 13 years only has a few hundred regular players. and we need 20 people for a match so it can still work for a 1v1 i guess. you have a more personal community playing with the same people. check out natural selection 2. its a rts/fps hybrid unlike anything you have ever seen.
As a Protoss player, I was hoping for a faction in Stormgate that somewhat resembles Protoss, specifically the troop deployment style of Warpgates, which has always been my favorite mechanic of that race. Stormgate doesn't have anything like that; the faction that seems to have similarities to the Protoss are the Angels. While they look good from an aesthetic point of view, the faction feels cheesy, and ironically, as a Protoss player, I don't like that they are so cheesy. Literally breaking the game and attacking with the 'command center' feels like a playstyle without strategy, just going to your opponent and winning through brute force... that's not for me, and I think very few people will enjoy that style of play, specifically the more casual players. It's like the game developers took the cannon rush and applied it to the whole faction, literally the most boring and bad strategy of Protoss. In conclusion, I feel that Stormgate is not for me.
I'm not sure whether the campaign is bad because it was made rushed and/or under crunch, or if the map designers didn't know how to create a satisfying campaign that introduces players to the game. Either way, it's a bad sign when I'd rather replay Crossfire Legion's campaign, or even Act of Aggression's, than the current Stormgate missions. I'd say they should overhaul or even scrap the existing missions and focus on building co-op and multiplayer content in the meantime, while they make the campaign actually worth playing.
The only problem is that people thought Early Access meant it was done. So many people expected near finished campaign missions while all the dev blogs talked about how we were going to be going along for the ride in development and that at LEAST a year would be spent in EA. They clearly stated the map editor wasn't coming for months after EA release why would people think the game would be polished when it doesn't even have a complete map editor? Criticize the game all you want but there is a difference between criticism, even unconstructive criticism, and unfounded expectations. "Next gen RTS" did not mean EA launch was going to be polished. >inb4 cope
I tried to play it, but it didn't immediately capture me and I felt like it was hard to get into. There is also something about the aesthetics/style of the game that just doesn't resonate with me. Maybe I've just gotten old or have played too many games, but design-wise feels like something kids might like, not me. The Vanguard robotic style imo is just so meh, I don't think it's badass.
I hated Stormgate when I first tried it. Then I kind of fell in love. Then when the initial love wore off, I was left with a cool, flawed game that i'm honestly hoping will get its shit together.
They really went with angles vs demons ... And also too much tournaments before game even available to public ( for example on Beta I had 30 wins in straight, they close it and only PROS of sC2 were competing on the stage, so basically I played the game and that was it... ) and too much of it everywhere, can imagine me going on ranked and ppl be like oh you copy this one you copy that one ...
This game has lot of bugs... Problems not fixed for months Plastic texture that looked 🤢 Menu looks like StarCraft, even the factions looks the same Terrans=Vangard, Zerg=Inferno, Protoss= that angelic faction 😅 Campaign looks bad, there is no save/load system Brutal dif. Is easy If everything is not fixed until the end of the year or the next... It's finished... And Don't listen to game journalist like IGN, they are paid for it...
Infernal’s are also more like orcs than zerg in terms of gameplay and undead in terms of graphics, main similarity is that both have some kind of a “creep mechanic,” and celestials only look like protoss, but play more like zerg/undead
I've watched a few diff streamers over the last year play this game. I've heard the claims. It was supposed to be advancing the rts genre to the next level. But in reality, it feels lacking anything new or standout besides maybe an easier skill floor than sc2 which isn't something the more competitive crowd cares about. Beyond that, it is "different" but still largely the same as a wc3 or sc2 gameplay. An alternate set of units, but plays the same. No giant new advancement like was promised. So... just like how my friends hyped up Iron Man as "best superhero movie ever" when It came out, it had self-created (and playtester boosted) shoes to fill. And like Iron Man, proved (to me) to be solid, but not the "better than everything" it was supposed to be. That makes you view things as worse than it actually is. If they really wanted a next gen rts, then look to Tom Clancy's writing. Imagine playing Civ, but you actually jump in and fight the battles both as 3rd person and as rpg 1st person simultaneously. That is next gen rts. If you aren't delivering something along those lines, don't claim you will. If all you're really offering is an alternative for the competitive playtesters... why spend all the time, money to get the same as you can get just continuing to play aoe2, aom, sc2, wc3? There is no real incentive unless they're burned out of those games. And even then, you are no better an option than one of the others listed.
Dude talk about hitting a nail on its head. This game is not bad, it is very unpolished and I guess shown before it should of been, but personally I liked the early looks. Instead of cooking for years with no outside feedback. The campaign is meh, but I can see the ideas. The co-op is actually fun, I lose often and still learning The 1v1 is great I've not had any issues with dogs like everyone else has, just position better, I feel like people just can't adapt to anything, and if this game doesn't drop exactly what they should do into their laps, they just go EWWWW stupid broken!
3v3 will definitely be in rough state. As for balance complains... This is something that will have to happen early on in PvP RTS. So I disagree with them waiting on 3v3 and co-op since it was prerequisite for 3v3. They have to go on with it. Campaign was mistake but the rest of it has to come out raw so they get enough feedback and testing. Bad metas need to be found and dealt with etc.
Gonna be honest, using StarCraft 2's alpha as a reason to be less skeptical of Stormgate is a really bad example Imo. To me personally SC2's alpha looked way more fun and visually readable than the actual release.
you did not talk about the rts renaissance and the stiff competition, there are many many games will come out in a short period of time and the rts gaming community as a whole is not that big, no it is not just up to the developers, others should fail too in order this to be a big hit, you did not talk about the lack of innovation that other new rts has/will have etc. this was a very very undercooked video, stormgate needs a miracle
the problem with actual games is that "you can see the population" and then people go "hmm, not enough, better stay where i am" rinse and repeat with new plausible players and then the players in the game say "same people over and over, this is boring, bye" and it keeps going till it dies...
I have to agree. I am campaign and coop player. yeah I was appalled by the graphics, yeah I see hints of girlbossing and DEI in in the game but nothing serious. I played the 3 free mission 3 times. I maxed my free champion to max level in coop. I kinda liked the experience but now there is nothing to do... I dont remember about SC1 but I think the game started with 20 missions, Sc2 25 maybe? here we have 3... I dont even have free comapnder from each race to try in coop. If they fix the graphics /cos it need more/ add 20 missions, add a free commander from each race I can see myself spending money and time in the game.
frost giants tried to make a game under the promise of being better than sc2(not straight up said, but heavily implied), because "the people who made sc2 now work for us", and we all hoped for a great game... and right now, storm gate looks like an older game than sc2, the game lacks an identity, it lacks the charm and inspiration the starcraft world had... you have budget terran, budget zerg and budget protoss without any of the charm that the original sc races had. I still remember their trailer when they claimed the units would move so much smother thanks to a new engine they are working with, and it's still not as good as how sc2 units feel.
Also the main problem I have with Stormgate is honestly how it controls. The AI is just not right. The types of plays that are possible falls far short of both Starcraft 1, 2, and even Warcraft 1,2,3. I like action oriented games more. I want to be able to control my units well and win that way.
I'll be honest. The devs themselves shot this game in the foot on several occasions, and then double-tapped its kneecaps for good measure. The game is advertised as "NEXT GEN RTS" while it miserably fails to measure up to 14 years old Starcraft 2 and 22 years old Warcraft 3, all the while taking from these titles massively. Let's be honest - if you advertise yourself as NEXT GEN, the next gen is what people are going to expect. And if you under-deliver - you will feel the pain of it. It overfocuses on multiplayer, while repeating the same formula as StarCraft and Warcraft - to the point that units are designed AROUND APM and micro. Basic "not terran marine" gets speed boost when bursting to encourage micro in the same way people micro SC2 Terran Marines. The "not siege tank" is designed around being carried by "not medivac" while in siege mode, which was a much maligned gimmick of SC2 at the time as well. Coming from overfocus on multiplayer - is the mentioned over-reliance on pros. Let's be real - multiplayer is NOWHERE near as big as some people make it out to be. If you look at games such as Dawn of War 2, Age of Empires 2, Company of Heroes 2 - only 2-15% of players played multiplayer with ANY degrees of consistency - and pros within that already tiny niche are only few % themselves. Pandering to these kinds of groups brutally SHOVES the game into obscurity - because RTS games already have a notoriously harsh barrier of entry for multplayer. Classic RTS games also have the problem with newbie expectations. It is a strategy game, right? But what strategy is there. When your average person thinks strategy, they don't think "ah yes, 3 million APM and 50 memorised opening builds perfectred to 0.01 of a second, or else you effectively lose the game within 2 minutes, and then you need to perfectly babysit every unit, because they are unable to find their own arse in the dark, with a map and a flashlight in tow". No, that is kind of monkey reflex bollocks belongs with arcade games or shooters. The unappealing art style is a constant point of contention - it looks like something between despised REFORGED and some mobile shovelware. Again - it does not measure up to a 14 year old SC2... I mean, really? And let's be honest - spectacle is a big part of the game's appeal... And it is... not there. There is no sense of scale - we still suffer from "infantryman bigger than a tank" syndrome, units still mindlessly exchanging blow like static pawns, unless you manually micro. It does not showcase anything we didn't see before on graphical end... And by "before", I mean 14 years ago. Another problem is lack of innovation - again, going back to NEXT GEN RTS - people were expecting something else than a soft re-hash of WC3 and SC2, with little to no new things around. And don't tell me about "worker units doing thins on their own" - that is such a basic stuff it could be modded into Warcraft 3. I mean, really, this copies SC2 down to such elements as unit blobbing, stutter-shooting and ramp blocking. And campaign? First missions showed were basically carbon copies of WC3 human campaign. There is a fine line between paying homage to classics and threading a safe, though lazy path.
If you're interested in Stormgate, here I cast it - www.youtube.com/@RTSCasts
Stormgate vs StarCraft 2 multiplayer comparison - ua-cam.com/video/4xs0RUb9XiI/v-deo.htmlsi=ruoJROXDRz87XzRx
The game IS dull and boring in its core. The skeleton IS the issue, not the meat. I can give you like 10 reasons why. I want you to think about it one more time. What is "bones" ?
In my opinion, the game takes too much inspiration from SC2 in ways in which it shouldn't take much inspiration, and it doesn't take enough inspiration in ways in which it should. The races are a straight up copy paste in terms of vibe and very inspired in design too, but they failed to capture the uniqueness of the original 3 races. The new protoss like race feels cheesy just like protoss, but doesn't feel good to play in the sense that you don't feel like you're outsmarting the enemy with your cheese, you just feel like you're cheesing for the sake of doing so. It's the difference between spamming a 50/50 in a fighting game vs. spamming a single move. Both are a kind of cheesing, but only one requires you to be kind of engaged in what you're doing. The Infernal race just doesn't feel like Zerg at all, and it doesn't have to, but if you're clearly making it look like Zerg, don't trick us Zerg fans. The mist isn't even a hundredth of the fun that creep was and it doesn't feel a millionth as good to spread. The feeling just isn't there, you don't feel like you're corrupting that zone so that your little ugly creatures can excel in it because it's their environment now, you just feel like "Ok now I get a buff in this zone, got it". The terran like race, which in my experience is the one that took the most inspiration from SC2, is just an easy to get into, but complex to branch out race, just like Terran. Doesn't feel unique at all. All of this and I haven't even mentioned the designs on the characters, which are a whole'nother conversation about how bad they can be in some cases... Game doesn't feel as fluid as SC2, doesn't feel unique in any department and honestly I just think this was the nail in the coffin of RTS's. I'll also say that elevating Frost Giant and Stormgate on the "RTS Savers" pedestal wasn't a good move, not by us fans and not by FG themselves.
The fact they actually released this game to the public in this state and charged money for it is insulting. Stormgate is feeling like a straight up scam at this point.
@@TravisHowrish-v2c I gotta say I've been further from that opinion than I am now, but the constant support and making the community feel heard is kind of reassuring about the scam possibility. But yeah, I get what you mean, hearing us doesn't do shit if they don't act on it
That 50/50 vs single move thing falls into the category of being “interactive”. Its not fun to play broken top 1 characters because there isnt much interaction vs something more towards mid/high tier
Completely right in what you are saying but just digging deeper into it. As a fighting game player, its boring af when your character isnt very interactive. Literally dropped strive because ram was braindead
Making a unique RTS game isn't bad, but however, making a unique RTS game in a time where there are already established RTS games in a niche genre is like trying to get blood from a stone.
One thing is they advertised it as a “next gen social” RTS, which it does do some cool things, but I wouldn’t call it next gen (yet, might be in the future) as well as lacking pretty much every social feature, as well as a small character limit in in-game chat messages.
game has no chat, no guilds, no anything to claim "social" part of markting
Next gen ? StarCraft 2 from 2010 has better visuals than Stormgate.
The simplest answer is often the most accurate. People left immediately because the game is poor on all fronts. It’s DOA. They had to have run out of money and pushed this out raw product with heavy handed monetization, thinking they could hide under a goodwill early access tag.
Basset I think that you fumbled this one, there is much valid criticism for SG like performance, unit clarity, path finding, global mm being forced on everyone, creeps being more valuable than expanding, uninspired graphics/unit designs, ttk being too high, sound effects being atrocious and many many more things, do I want SG to fail? NO if anything I want SG to be such a massive success that it would force other triple AAA studios to come back and make rts games but every time I am playing SG I am asking myself why play this instead of sc2 and I really can't find a reason at it's current state.
and worst of all, it's so similar to sc2 that it constantly reminds you of the much better alternative you could be playing instead
i droped it a day after it came out said fuck this ill play godswarn with actual propper skurmish modes
Stormgate side effect was that I lost a lot of trust with SC2 casts, while players like UThermal, Tyler and Grubby were honest.
nah Grubby was a jerk about it.
@@Broockle you mean honest that game is not good
@@erfarkrasnobay
a statement like that glosses over so much nuance. It sux that you can't be transparent as a game company and not be eating so much 💩. All they wanted was a feedback pipeline to make the best RTS they could. It was a naive plan prbly, time will tell.
The way they take the criticism and adapt the game to the art, story and everything else around it, and have active Reddit and Discord community, it's really exciting to be a part of.
I don't think it's helpful to the game if it gets bashed like that from a high level player. It's cool to say, it's not ready yet, I'll play it when it's better, but saying it's not good helps no one and it's not honest in my opinion.
Grubby even made another hour long video essay since, describing all the sub-genres of RTS and how he doesn't like most of them, and he's trying to figure out what it is he even wants from an RTS 😅
He's really doing a whole high horse charade sometimes, but I still love Grubby 😆
@@Broockle
The fact that an opinion "doesn't help" doesn't make it dishonest.
The devs keep saying they have no plan to change the art style. And apart from literally changing The functionality of most units, I don't see how this game can surpass sc2 (a 15 year old game) even after every issue is ironed out. When your game brings very little new to the table and is just a mix of existing games (unlike Battle Aces, Beyond All Reason etc.), you HAVE to show improvement over the source. Otherwise what's the point?
@@habarvaz
"The fact that an opinion "doesn't help" doesn't make it dishonest."
Didn't say that.
I think it's irrefutable that Stormgate is incredibly promising. Saying it's "bad" doesn't imply that it's "not good yet", it implies that it has nothing of value to give. And that is just false.
They literally revamped Amara's design last week. Or what problem do you have with the art style now?
SC2 would have been a golden goose if it were open source. The amount of games that people could make, the RTS explosion we could have had. But no body except the truest of fans use the SC2 engine to make anything. Such as Azeroth Reborn, it's made by one guy who runs a patreon.
SC2 had incredible promise but it never took off, especially now that Activision basically keeps the rights in a drawer in a basement somewhere. Essentially SC2 is unattainable.
Now with Stormgate and Snowplay we have another shot at this.
If we can actually have a useable modern RTS engine out in the world for people to dev with that would be incredible.
Vert few indie games devs make RTS cause of the insane technical standard an engine has to reach to be running efficiently on potatoes.
Stormgate itself will also be pretty awesome in it's own right. While 1v1 is fun and all, I'm really gonna be in it for the 3v3 and coop modes. I'm very much looking forward to that reveal next year. We'll also get our first looks at the editor.
Hype.
I don't think the problems with Stormgate are the community's fault. The community was very positive when it was announced. As more and more information came out, the community's opinions steadily soured. "I don't like the cartoony style, but hopefully the gameplay is good" was the general thought for a while now. This criticism has been around for ages, and it's not been taken to heart.
They started off by making it sound like this was next-gen tech. Then the pathing is worse than SC1. So they update the pathing and make it somehow even worse. This isn't a problem with community feedback. It's a broken game with a good PR team. Now that the PR team can't sell it anymore, the game is dying.
My thoughts as well.
The art style in this game just drives me insane. The bizarre character proportions, the stiff hair, the bulging eyes, the uninspired units that look like cheap kids toys from the dollar store. It is repulsive to look at.
dude facts did anyone watch the video where a guy forgot his chanel name brakes down all the flaws of the game sound video gameplay story and coop and shows how shit the game is when you look at it dogs running around in circles sound balancing issues missing sound effects graphical issues and the list continues
In my observation, software that isn't good at release never gets good. Lack of revenue and employee turnover will stagnate development.
dude they are panicing since there funds are running out imo think they didnt understand what an undertaking making a tripple a rts would be now that daddy blizard isnt footing the bill you are screwed frostgiant
@@Dragonborn1178everyone needs to calm down. I have no memory of some AAA promise. It would be ridiculous to believe anyone who would even say that.
The game is fine for a fledgling independent studio. Gamers are freaking out because they have expectations worse than shareholders about what a game should be like. I really don't get why people are freaking out about this game not being what they thought.
No
@@Dragonborn1178 Nowadays not even Blizzard can produce AAA games. Most of their delivering in the last 10 years has been trash.
@@thatwildginger5423 uh homie, people are freaking out because the lies frost giant has told has come to light. They lied and said they have the funds to make it to full release. They dont, theyre actually so broke they had to take out a loan. Deep dive into the financial side of things and you can see they need an act of God to make it. They're broke, no one is playing their game, no one is willing to risk more capital into them.
What got me frustrated about this game was the lack of creativity. It's just like they smashed starcraft, warcraft and diablo together and called it a day.
Oh look! The people who made WarCraft and StarCraft now made a game like WarCraft and StarCraft! How bizarre!
ya its a total ripoff and buggy mess ill stick to godswarn a 2 man team made a better game then these clowns
@@Zibit21 Creativity means you can come up with something new and interesting, but you would not understand.
It's over. Especially when there are videos like this coming out lol
From the moment it was revealed, every single SC2 content creator acted like Stormgate would cure cancer and end world hunger, to the point it started to seem a little sus, while all criticism was dismissed. I didn't see it, to me it looked bland, uninspired and had none of the qualities that made me fall in love with SC2. They tried so hard to make the next RTS e-sport that they forgot to make it fun. There's nothing in SG that makes me go 'I want to play this, this unit looks awsome to play with' and it doesn't seem like there will be. I'm glad you brought up AoM because that game does the exact opposite: completely unbalanced OP stuff everywhere with absolute chaos all around. And it's been the most fun I've had with RTS since early WoL. There are some deeper mechanics in there for competitive play but the core of the experience is pure, silly fun. I can throw meteors at your base while scorpion men kill all your villagers, or I can...stutter step not-Marines, I guess?
I have had to uninstall AoM for the forseeable future because it was wrecking my sleep schedule. That, to me, is the highest praise I can give a game lol.
An important thing to realize about sc2 content creators is they stand to benefit financially if a new RTS hits the scene and brings in a massive audience.
Even sub-consciously they want the game to succeed because their viewers could go up by 10x if a super popular RTS came along.
@@Statleburgercurious why many of them who heavily promoted SG haven't or have barely shown AoM then. A game that is everything Stormgate wishes it was.
@@mrcookies409 microsoft didn't play people to play aom is why. Frost giant reached out for sponsors to try and lure in the pro scene. It didnt work. money wasted.
I was expecting something like Path of Exile. Where you have this small dev team that brings new ideas and blows Blizzard out.
well said... imagine is they make PoE RTS...
@@ixirion SG shows that it’s not practical for RTS as a genre, demonstrably so.
@@everythingsgonnabealright8888 SG only shows that trying to copy an existing game is a bad idea.
No future, was hopeless game since the moment devs started to share some info about it (even before gameplay trailer) Still some sc2 PRO GAMERS continued to say smth like " Ah did you see sc2 beta? it was also worse than release" In the end we have a trash game with no future (again, was obvious from the beginning) . Lags, bugs, boring, raw, failed hybrid of many games (better if they focused on making like 80-90% of stuff from concrete game, be it sc2, than mixing everything to get a cocktail with fish and milk)
So, making a unique RTS game is financial suicide, then?
I had high hopes for this game, but there is just nothing there for me right now. I was already iffy with the art style but figured if the gameplay was good I could over look it, but every single time I loaded up the game, something else would come up that I just did not like. Key binds, pathing, art style, sounds, tool tips, wait times, story, etc. it all just adds up to, why am I even playing this? Like, who is this game made for? I thought it was for RTS fans, specifically SC2 players past and present but the more I look the more I think this game is made for children.
That’s my question too. Who is this game made for ? Why would anyone play this ? I just purchased Age of Mythology Retold and am having a blast. The game plays great, has interesting mechanics, cool unit and faction design, and most importantly it’s FUN.
dude rts games from 20 years ago were better like kanes wrath that still gets community support to this day as well as tournaments as well as generals zero hour fuck stormgate
As a backer, here is my opinion on what made the EA launch fail.
1) The developers set the expectations too high before launch and had to backtrack and set up WIP signs as a response to the very mixed feedback on the game's content.
2) It didn't have polished content besides 1vs1 that is also missing a lot of units. It's clear that the game has put more focus on 1vs1 so far at the expense of the rest, so the devs need to bring the other content up to par and even surpass it since Campaign, Co-op, Custom Games, and 3vs3 are what will make or break this game. The hardcore 1vs1 audience only survives on the back of the casual audiences that like to play other modes, since 1vs1 is not what most people play in an RTS.
3) Campaign was undercooked and rushed out the door for EA launch. "The Stand" mission where you guard the drill as you get swarmed is by far the best designed mission while the rest are either okay or just bad by being too short, having poor pacing, having unpolished gameplay ideas, and/or very poor presentation like graphics, story, voice acting, etc.
4) There is currently no hook that makes Stormgate unique from StarCraft 2 or WarCraft 3 whether it's Co-op, Campaign, or 1vs1. The game needs to make bold choices and explore new territories for it to get an identity that is distinct from those games. The 3vs3 mode having Heroes and new types of map objectives at least sound like new ideas being explored, so I am looking forward to that.
5) Graphical presentation is all over the place, with most of it being pretty bad if you play the Campaign. Character designs, 2D character portraits, placeholder UI, in-game cutscenes, and more are very underwhelming. At least with Amara's newly teased character model it makes me more hopeful about the art direction being salvageable, especially since the human models and the female ones specifically looked really bad at launch. They also have to address the unit designs that are pretty underwhelming and make playing each faction feel cool and thematic. The only reason I played Zerg in StarCraft 2 was because of the look and feel of the faction, so the devs need to focus on the cool factor before making it all feel fair and balanced.
6) The game lacks replayability if you don't play 1vs1. There isn't a good reason to revisit the Campaign after finishing it on Brutal (which can be finished in one sitting). Co-op is not fleshed out enough yet to make you come back besides doing higher difficulties. If you've played 20-30 hours you will have seen most of what the game currently offers.
7) Finally, the game lacks social features. This was a massive problem when StarCraft 2 launched and the problem is even worse in Stormgate by not even having online lobbies to talk to other people. The game needs to allow players to build communities for people to want to stay and play.
If the patch content is consistent and well received there is still hope for the game to succeed, but it is going to be a massive uphill battle to live up to the legacy of the older Blizzard RTS games.
ya the game is shit at launch look at what beyond all reason and godswarn did bar focused on its multiplayer first to have a good community supporting its foundation then you add story godswarn is a 2 person dev team and the game is tuns better then stormgate its just sad a entire team of like 40 or 50 people cant make things better and its now taking them months to patch stuff ya fuck that even a game like 9 bit armies plays better
I appreciate your detailed, thoughtful analysis of where it fumbled its launch. The thing I love most about the RTS community is just the elevated maturity, respect, and solidarity (odd trolls aside). I feel like the community has become just a little more toxic since the SG EA release, and I really hope it remembers what makes it so awesome to love RTS. It’s nice to see comments that are still real and critical, but also thoughtful and not extremist.
"I have a strong feeling that Stormgate is the most underrated, poorly understood game that has been released recently..."
It's badly optimized (although the devs will just tell you your PC sucks), the pathing is ABYSMAL, and above all else it's just not fun. I'm more than willing to give the game a chance in the future, but it just sucks to play right now, and they want us playing NOW. They released the game NOW. They're charging money NOW. I don't want to play it now. What am I underrating? What am I not understanding? I'm legitimately curious. Show me where the fun is.
If this game Has a hero like wc3...
as i said in my comment on here godswarn a game with 2 fucking people working on it got 4v4 working and the game looks nicer then stormgaate that game is also in early access
Like 90% of these content creators have been paid by Frost Giant to make content promoting them. It's so difficult to tell. The fact that Frost Giant are out here swindling people and then victim blaming because people aren't running 4090s and then they've just flat-out made shit up like "Unreal is difficult to work with." - Unreal is the leading game engine for AAA games, Hollywood movies and shows, and any indie developer can pick it up. Pathing is not hard. Lighting is easy. Making stuff look good in Unreal is the lowest-hanging fruit imaginable. Nanite and Lumen are so well-optimized at this point that they're allowing a GTX1080 to display stuff it could not when it released 8 years ago.
Honesty goes a very long way in games. That's why studios like Larian have succeeded.
@@smantie I wouldn't go that far. If a creator isn't bashing the game, it's likely because they don't want to burn any bridges; fairly understandable to me, but I can understand the sentiment of feeling swindled.
The game looks and plays like garbage, so the devs blaming people for not having good enough rigs is absolutely ridiculous, yeah.
I've used Unreal in the past, and I wouldn't say it's "easy" to make a fully functional RTS with good performance. However, that was their job, and they failed.
@@unrighteous8745 That's a fair assumption, but FG sent out a ton of "care packages" to content creators and asked them to make content for them. Some creators said these were paid, some have denied it, but it REALLY looks like many Creators were compensated to give posts about a year ago saying that they were excited for SG.
Heck, they even did this with HuskySC who became a pariah in the scene.
It isn't easy to make an RTS in any engine, but AI pathing is super easy. They're not reinventing the wheel here, but they are repeatedly making mistakes that the games industry solved 20yrs ago. Some of my colleagues are veterans of Westwood Studios and worked on TibSun and RA2 and more, and have been looking at SG. Last year at DH one just said to me "What the heck are they doing showing this?" and one could argue that it was better THEN than now.
What future? 🙃
They should have focused on the solo campaign, just like SC2 wings of liberty, then the multiplayer could be just some basic units, exactly as it happened with SC2 with each expansion, but here you are actually building the game one race at the time.
That is a fantastic idea (and I am totally a campaign-first kind of guy), but the problem is that a campaign is typically made late in RTS development. You basically have to develop all the same assets that you would for 1v1, and then on top of that add an AI, tons of additional abilities and progression systems, cinematics, voice acting, etc. It’s a huge undertaking. It makes sense that 1v1 would be the most polished at this stage. I think their mistake was releasing the campaign this early. They should have just opened EA with the 1v1, and just hinted at story ideas to come. They could have slowly released lore videos introducing characters and factions and world-building. And then months down the line after some proper lore to add hype, boom, new campaign. Even just releasing the missions but withholding those awful looking cinematics would be better (less is more). Instead, we got what we got. They can still improve it, but at this point they’re doing damage control. I have hope, but I’m not putting my money into anything until they prove it’s worth it at this point.
I honestly don't see how COH3 release is similar to Stormgate. COH3 had 36k concurrent players on release, Stormgate had 5k. One month after launch, COH3 still had over 8k players, but Stormgate is at 0.4k (assuming F2P launch as the launch date). Also, companies behind COH and No Man's sky had other revenue streams and publishers, who could supply money when in dire need. Stormgate would have to raise funding externally, which is a really hard sell at this point. They need to pull a true miracle to survive until 1.0 and I am interested to see how this will pan out.
Releasing the early access in this state was the nail in the coffin for this game. It wasn’t received well by anybody. They killed their own hype.
@@TravisHowrish-v2c Yeah, but I think they had no other choice. Frost Giant was running out of money fast (over $1M per month burn rate) so they made a big bet to release early and hope for the best. And this is the result.
this went down exactly how i expected
I lost interest once I realized it was literally Diablo and starcraft mixed together aesthetically. I was hoping for something a little more than just demons versus Angels versus humans. Also The story is predictable. We're going to have another Kerrigan or arthas moment and the "Xelnaga wall" in one of the cinematics sent me
The comparison to SC2 alpha isn't great. SC2 alpha came over 15 years ago, when stuff like this was never seen, and everyone seeing it would have 100% liked to play it and would have enjoyed it.
If you bring something new and exciting to the table, lack of polish is more easily forgiven. But when selling a product that will look extremely outdated even when finished, there is no reason to give it a second thought at this poor current state
Sc2 alpha looks tons better than sg alpha
“I overhyped this game”, and then just a few seconds later “I believe it can be the best RTS game ever”.
You learned nothing. You made no real conclusions. This really is cope. The whole video rubbed me the wrong way, but bringing up No Man’s Sky - a proper, one payment (not f2p) game that was rushed because of publisher and which improved itself over 10 years without asking a single new penny from the players aside from the price of the game - was the last straw. You show no real understanding of the whole thing.
This video is unpaid damage control.
no mans sky was also a success in sales. It made millions. Stormgate is in the hole by many many millions.
I feel bad to all the people who financially supported this game. It's just an unfinished mess that was pushed out to Early Access because they needed more money. I hope Zero Space fares better.
I have ZeroHope it does
Nah I kid I kid
Zerospace will not have as many players on release, but it will probably have much better reviews
Zerospaces problem is mainly that no one knows it exists, and so advertising is a must
@@ZverseZ Don't worry. Once they iron out and polish the stuff, it will get the traction it deserves
Why does nobody talk about Zerospace? Its always been more interesting than stormgate.
ya that seems cool but people say some units are not ready grubby said its a bit unbalanced atm but you should also try godswarn that game is sick played last night
The advertising needs to be very clear and open about the fact that the game is in very early stages instead of "it's the next gen of RTS"
You cannot compare Stormgate to Sc2 alpha. Because Stormgate is not competing with a version of Sc2 from 2007, but with a version of Sc2, AoE4, AoE2, BAR, etc in 2024
Which would be fine if the game would have a soul or vision, but i do not see it at all, therefore i'm not going to invest into it. Good luck to them but, for every No Man's Sky there are 100 closed games. NMS is not the rule, but the exception
Tassadar is wise and speaks the truth!
@@KaiserMattTygore927 just dont let me drive a Carrier
@@DMiso90 okay this made me laugh
"The core problem is that the game still has little to offer at the moment, there is not much content to stick around......" Bruh .... and FrostGiant still managed to already charge $15 for 3 15 mins "not final" campaign missions? already $10 for each hero/ commander? and also, they have a $60, $30 and $20 "early access pack" in their steam page like wtf, and still marketing this trash as F2P?..... sorry, but this game is a massive failure, and a big blow to the RTS genre that is already dwindling.....
Just play AoM Retold. RTS back baby ! (a bit)
@@goochipoochie keep coping, that 20+ y/o game will be gone in less than a month like ao4... 🤣
Stormgate wants to be starcraft, but it's not. It's worse in every possible way.
I did not like the graphics, whilst I don't play the game for the graphics/art, graphics/art certainly make me not play a game.
People said if you dont like it, dont play it, well that is exactly what I did; Played 1 game in the beta as vanguard - won the game by stutter step; thing is when the marines or whatever they called were shooting, they never felt like they were shooting. In SC1 and SC2, then I went into battle with the marines, I could really feel it, with SG there is no feeling it.
Спасибо бассет, интересно смотреть тебя на двух языках)
It was interesting to listen!
Thanks!
we can accurately project their fiancials because their SEC reports are public through startengine, they turned to startengine and kickstarter because they never recieved a third round of venture capital. Thank you for the video you made some solid points but its publically available knowledge they only have enough runway until febuary
Basset coping so hard
Yeah.
Yep. If the game was good people would be having fun and playing it. It’s not rocket science.
8:50 Game has 4 years of development, and half of year in the alpha/beta/EA if they still need time to show their vision and they can't do this with 6 missions of campaign lots of Coop and PvP time - then they have no vision.
how many years did WoL need with 3 or 5 times the team size?
@@iopklmification fyi warcraft 3 was developed in late 90 without 3d expiriance, with custom engine from the scratch within 4 years. Stormgate created 20+ years after, have 4 years of development of expirience team and not even comparable to warcraft 3 of release version in terms of quality and enjoyment. And this without even measuring amount of content for $60 backing. And if you disagree, take your badge of "top-500 stormgate player", it will cost $4.99 before taxes.
I called Stormgate the Undead Tier 3 melee unit back in June 2022, and got banned from the forums. Guess what? The most charitable view would be they are programmers with zero artistic vision. A less charitable would be... they are ideological and bad and greedy and callous. Acronym FGS.
- Adûnâi
it is truly an abomination of an RTS
test - my comments disappears all the time...
Let's reduce what I wrote:
I am sorry to say it, but Stormgate is DoA.
I had high hopes for the game and was positive about the team and what they were trying to do.
But when I watched some people (e.g. Lowko + Grant) play the Campaign, I just couldn't believe what I saw.
It is bad. So bad.
My best analogy is the following: If Starcraft 1+2 + Warcraft 3 are Serral, then Stormgate is a Diamond Zerg.
He tries to do the same things as Serral. Creepspread, injects, having queens in position, scouting, amry movement...
But he is worse at everything. Nothing is even close to how Serral plays. Ever single thing Serral does, he does ten times better.
And from what I have heard and seen from the Coop-Commander, it's not looking that much better.
So they failed with the campaign, the coop commanders are boring- there is nothing that will give the game any decent player base.
And without player base there won't be custom maps (like the tons of player generated content WC + SC has).
Like I said, I am very sorry, but IMO the game is dead.
The game is 100 percent dead. Who exactly is going to play this game ? Who is this game for ? It does nothing that other RTS games don’t already do better.
Then the genre is no longer fresh anymore. Every popular RTS game are decades old and stale today.
Thanks for the content. You have great analysis, Input and unique perspective. Thanks again
Someone else said it, but I'll say it in my own words: While you don't always need to re-invent the wheel, we've been playing WC3 or SC2 for *decades.* Under those circumstances, people inevitably want a new & refreshing experience. SG feels like it doesn't do anything new (besides the quick macro UI,) or question it's long established conventions such as A-move. One video that stuck out in my memory (I don't remember the exact video) was a casting of 2 bronze players duking it out, and neither used A-move cuz they didn't know it exists. I've played a game called Beyond All Reason, and all the units attack AND move simultaneously. A-move still exists in that game, but their default nature of being able to attack and move at the same time felt much better to operate. The game also does so much other stuff that makes it easier to play without stripping the RTS identity too, with their eco system being the only real hurdle.
Going back to Stormgate, I've only played 2 matches of PvP back in Steamfest, but what I already didn't like was that I got dog-rushed in 2 minutes in both my matches, while I was still preparing defenses. Something about lacking a starting defense aged poorly for me; I no longer enjoy games with these kinds of strats as a possibility.
Co-op is fun for me personally, but it's got the problems others pointed out, AND it shares the same issue SC2 co-op has: Everyone only gets 1 expansion. I sincerely thought they were going to break that mold back when I played Steam NextFest and their one co-op map, but NOPE! The rest of the new maps only have one expo per player to take.
Everyone said the same rhetoric about the campaign, I have nothing new to provide in that front.
Also didn't they advertise Stormgate as a social RTS? Where's the social aspects? Where's lobby chat? Where's clans? I get this game is in early access, but for a game that touts about becoming a """SOCIAL""" RTS, you'd think they'd be finished or at least ready on release for the public. They're nowhere to be seen.
well the mistake was trusting IGN. IGN gives something a 7 its more like a 4. which means its bad or sub par.
As a passionate SC2 fan and high tier backer of SG, I really, REALLY want the game to succeed. But I still feel so worried. Sure, they can fix a ton of stuff in one year - but every aspect of the game is in a 0-50% state. That makes me feel anxious about whether they will have the strength to go through with it. Also, consider this: We don't know what their financial background is, but you can bet that they calculated with financing the production of later campaign missions with incoming money. With a declining player base of < 1k players - RIP campaign. Damn, I hope this thing still somehow takes off.
as they say you backed the rong horse im gunna back godswarn on patrian since the game is fun feels finished in early access and has 2v2 3v3 and 4v4 stormgate is almost dead patching your game every 1 month and not more shows devs arnt quick to care about things
brother, we do know their financial situation. Its absolutely dire. They have admitted in a filing theyre unlikely to be able to continue. They need massive amounts of money no one is willing to give any. They told their investors to expect at least 40k concurrent players during ea. 40k. they often have just 200. They have gone around begging for more cash but no one is giving it. they even had to take out a loan to continue. Now no one else will loan them money as the revenue they generate per month is near 0.
This is all public information due to them selling equity etc. its why so many people are upset, frost giant has lied and lied often. They dont have the cash to make it to 1.0 release even though they said they did. They have updated this in a legal document that they meant they could only make it to Early access.
You can't expect to spend 1 million dollars plus a month and survive as a company. This is also public information.
@@beefstewiscool Source?
@Ayanami3rd their public SEC filing among other documents. These are public. You can also see the times paying themselves a quarter million a year. If you don't know how to look for the sec filings, I can link them. But they're easily obtained
Reminds me of the original SC1 that was made in a modified wc2 engine. It looked bad that it was reworked for more than a year to become the classic we know and love. Perhaps they need to drastically revise.this.
I agree with everything you said.
Only that the game was released in this state in contrast to starcraft 2 can also have reasons.
Blizzard could simply afford to have games in development for so long with playtesting and co.
Stormgate is certainly positioned differently and has to take the “paid early access” money and the playtesting by the players, for example.
Not really interested in Stormgate. Both the cartoony graphics and overwhelmingly lukewarm reviews let me know I don't want spend time on this game. I am however looking forward to Tempest Rising and ZeroSpace. Both of those look to have a lot of potential. Hopefully at least one of them turns out amazing. Maybe you can do a video about what's going on with those games.
The extremely cartoony graphics were such a bizarre choice. I will never understand what they were thinking when they designed this game. RTS games are SO much cooler when they have dark and gritty art and themes.
i wasnt a fan of the game the second i watched the first few preview videos that were out.
Toxic positivity is an issue in the game industry.
Is that what we call Hype now?
It's an issue everywhere. People put feelings over good feedback and results.
@Broockle not at all. It's referring to the idea that everyone gets a pat on the back and a participation trophy, rather than holding people to a high standard and being accountable for the quality of their work.
@@DarkArchon212
hmm Where do we see this?
That is not what's happening at Frost Giant guys. The amount of 💩 they get to eat from reviews and critics is huge.
Tho this is what they kind of wanted. They wanted the feedback quickly to adjust quickly cause they themselves admitted that in spite of all their experience, they're not sure what the next great RTS should be like. That's why they made these early builds and were more transparent than studios usually are at this stage.
They are absolutely not illusioning themselves that they're game is amazing already. It still needs a ton of work.
@@Broockleyou won't convince them. This is the first time they played a proper Early Access game. They have no idea how game development works.
This game could have come out 15 years ago. RTS genre needs real innovation.
I agree, but HOWEVER, making a good, unique and successful real-time strategy game in a time where there are established RTS games in a niche genre, is like trying to get blood from a stone.
@razorback9999able established, but slowly dying.
I agree with your assessment so far 100%
No, you do not get it. The game is bad, like atrociously bad. You recognized it yourself you were overhyped. It is not a game per say, it is a a soul-less PRODUCT, a poorly executed fan-service where the devs think they know better and their customer are dumb. It has no identity, no vision, no proposition, nothing next-gen or ground breaking and now it does not even have an audience. They said they target the Blizzard RTS fans, fans who are now fathers, married, etc and they thought the good move was to set a child-like visual identity... I would only recommend this game to a 3 years old to discover easily the basis of RTS. The units do resemble the toys of new-born babies indeed and the mechanics can easily be understood by any mentally impaired person on earth. Yeah they are that interesting... What a scam! The only thing left is the attention economy around the game on UA-cam and social networks.
As a campaign guy first, I have hope but I’m also skeptical. I think their mistake was releasing the campaign this early. They should have just opened EA with the 1v1, and just hinted at story ideas to come. They could have slowly released lore videos introducing characters and factions and world-building. And then months down the line after some proper lore to add hype, boom, new campaign. The premise to me sounds awesome. Humans fighting for survival in a post-apocalyptic earth ruled by demons (and about to become stomping grounds for a celestial-hell war)? That is awesome! You could have Last of Us but with demons and machine guns! But we know nothing about it. And what little they’ve shown is just soured by underbaked, early-draft presentation. Even just releasing the missions but withholding those awful looking cinematics would be better (less is more). Instead, we got what we got. They can still improve it, but at this point they’re doing damage control. I have hope, but I’m skeptical. And I’m too poor to pay $10.00 for three underbaked story missions.
In very rare case in g.industry, we can see a comeback games, like NMS, or Amongus, but it is very rare cases. And most of game near death, can't get this change, due the many reason.
For me the shittyness of the campaign just ruins the whole experience. IDC that much about the multiplayer and I was really excited to see the world and characters of stormgate, hell they managed to make the Infernal LAME with how they are in the campaign. They're not even as intimidating as Zerg in SC2. In fact as dumb as the storyline in SC2 is, stormgate is so much worse it makes me appreciate how much better SC2 is by comparison. I get that it's an INDIE game but why do RTS games in the early 2000s and 90s look more appealing with their graphics than stormgate? The game unironically trying to tell a serious story and having cinematic cutscenes with how horrible and lacking the animation is, is just laughable. They COULD improve the graphics later, but even then that's not gonna salvage the fact that its' characters so far suck, the dialogues bad, and it's a knock-off of WC3's human campaign with less interesting gameplay. At least if nothing else SC2 has higher production and more varied gameplay mechanics in its campaign.
Could the game get better? As far as multiplayer goes yes, though i think at this point singleplayer is a lot cause, which shouldn't be a surprise given how much of the devs focus has been on competitive play. The fact that MOST of its coverage has been from SC2 veterans and pros is already a red flag. I feel like they already fucked up just doing that, didn't SC2 prove that over-emphasizing competitive just alienates most gamers in RTS games? Most gamers aren't gonna sit down and watch game tournaments let alone for RTS games, or take the time and practice to learn 1v1 and grind on the ladder the same way simpler games like league can encourage them to do that. SC1 had a strong campaign, which helped maintain its legacy among even casual gamers.
I don’t have a lot of smart things to say other than - I was very excited to hear that former StarCraft devs were pouring their heart and soul and expertise into a new RTS, and was just so underwhelmed by the early access that I hurried and deleted, pretending like I didn’t see anything… hoping it would get better and more polished and more fleshed out and have a stronger launch in the near future. If it’s true that money has dried up, then maybe we simply will never get to see that polished game…
Counter argument on polish though. Why is Deadlock so fun - and early access, and not polished?! Valve did something right with the core mechanics and the way they talked about the release… I see Deadlock as having a very good chance of success.
So what’s the difference?!
Frost Giant invited players into the sausage factory.
Players entered the sausage factory and were somehow shocked to find guts and gore everywhere.
It’s still in beta it says ptr on main screen, the game is getting feedback from other than a regular unit tester, not every company has a David Kim.
The biggest problem is the focus on pvp and ranked instead of crafting a great and engaging campaign
and I think this is the clue - with starcraft, broodwar, warcraft 3, you got hooked with the campaign and when it finished, you wanted more, so you went customs and multiplayer, to kind of craft your own story (sc2 to a bit lesser extent, cos it already had a strong competetive scene). First you have seen awesome battles and meaty units in single player, each unit was introduced with a backstory, so you just naturally wanted to make cool things with cool tools.
Here the SG creators assumed they have the same foundation SC2 had, so they can go straight into esports.
I'll definitely buy it for the campaign but I don't see myself leaving SC2 for it.
As far as multiplayer goes, it just feels like we're retreading problems that SC2 already cleared up. I mean in theory the infest mechanic is interesting but in practice there's a reason why SC2 ultimately re-designed units like the infestor, BL, and swarm-host: because free units do NOT fit in a competitive RTS game and mess with the eb and flow of how army trades usually work. That's nothing to say about some of the stupid design choices like allowing vanguard to build an expansion in seconds, or allowing them to activate overcharge to make their workers borderline unkillable (ummmmm photon overcharge was cringe guys really we're STILL doing bases that defend themselves????). Same with workers exploding, if your army is out of position and you get harassed, you SHOULD...you SHOUUUULD BE PUNISHED FOR IT not get stupid get-out-of-jail free cards where you can turn your workers into banelings, which creates this BIZZARE dynamic of having to sacrifice workers just to add damage to your army because them and magmadons are your only consistent burst damage. Imagine having to waste drones in SC2 to fight terran when you need to maintain your economy LOOOOOL it's not fitting in a competitive space.
Also granted they have adjusted the cost of units recently but man the fact that they went on for MONTHS with infernal units being expensive despite marketing them as the stormgate equivalent of Zerg and CLEARLY being objectively worse in value than vanguard units was crazy. It seriously makes them look incompetent for not instantly noticing how fucked that was from a design perspective. There was a reason 150 minerals in Starcraft got you 6 zerglings, but for a long time 150 luminate gave you 3 fiends that don't even have crackling upgrades, and brutes were worse than lancers despite being 50 luminite more expensive. The math was not mathing devs pls.
"free units do NOT fit in a competitive RTS game and mess with the eb and flow"
I'm sorry, what does "eb" mean? Electronic balance? Elastic balance?
Love the videos, is it possible for you to loop SC1 Terran music or Stronghold Crusader soundtrack while you're discussing? We're losing the Zillenials ty
To me it is simple, I enter from year to year into SC2 Rank and I find match... if there is no people playing Stormage in some time it will be almost dead.
I won't start a war about how people overhyped it and such... but I will say soundly why most pro did it at least, and it was because the need money, they thought if Stormgate was huge they could move into it from StarCraft2 and make money again because living from SC2 is not really profitable, but even for them the game didn't hit as they wanted.
The most I tried StormGate the most I apreciate now StarCraft2
Where the devs failed was to assume gamers understand what early access means and did not properly communicate the state of development. It's very simple: Stormgate is YEARS (not one but multiple) away from release quality. In this state you wouldn't even get an announcement for a Blizzard game.
I've been playing StarCraft 2 for many years, and I still log on from time to time. The gameplay feels fluid, and the art style and lore behind it are incredible. However, I’ve never been a big fan of the SC2 storyline, especially when compared to StarCraft and Brood War.
That said, two things immediately turned me off is the art style and the story. I know it might sound odd to bring these up in a competitive game, but for me, it’s the world-building the art and lore that motivates me to play competitively. I’ve tried other competitive games, and my intrinsic motivation to improve always comes down to the same reason. I want to get better because the game’s world looks cool, or the story is rich, making me want to explore it further.
In contrast, my initial experience with Stormgate left me underwhelmed. The game’s aesthetics immediately felt too toy like, with everything looking overly silly for the serious story they’re trying to tell. It reminds me of the art style in League of Legends or Diablo 3. For a Demons vs. Angels theme, a grittier, more realistic art direction would be much more fitting. I personally would love a grittier story/art style to likes of SC BW or the current asthetics of D4, just in RTS form.
I’m also not a fan of random mobs in RTS games. While it works for MOBA games, here it feels like an extra, uninspired task. On a related note, the game’s pacing reminds me of Dota and LoL everything feels tanky. Instead of having an army of infantry supported by tanky units, it feels like every unit is too durable, much like in League. That style works in MOBA games because of the leveling system, where accumulating gold and experience points matters in a fast-paced, MMO-like way. But here, it feels out of place.
The sound design is another aspect that leaves much to be desired. As Storyteller mentioned, Frost Giant Studios overhyped the game, claiming to be the spiritual successor to games like SC and WC. I'm still hopefull that a new RTS will come along, but I feel this one just isn't it.
“there is a big difference between a game that is dull and boring at its core, and a game that is unfinished” wise words
stormgate just needs more time it will get up to par and far beyond, with time. no reason to give up on it yet.
Devs are just scamming players for your money. micro transaction on an early access game is the most scammy thing a developer can do and it is just plain stupid to give them the money they want.
Yep. Like 60-70% of kickstarters, this thing was a scam. They're pushing out a turd to say they delivered something, (so they don't get sued), but there's no heart in it.
Just a rip off of StarCraft. Why not do a different RTS? "Space Marines" has been done to death, and if you're just going to repeat a trope, you better have an interesting spin. But they don't.
It really is SC2 at home. But in this case SC2 would have been cheaper for your parents to get.
good points. yeah way too much hype leaves folks disappointed. really tho, RTS is hard to make good because you need people behind it, a player base.
other genres not as much unless we are thinking of MMORPGs like the recent fallout. some players but not many. same with red dead redemption 2 online. the online mode is just collecting achievements with friends that amount to nothing.
so grinding a game with no future is only worth it if you are having fun. so when i hear folks complaining about sc2 or even stormgate, i ask myself, am I having fun with this game? if the answer is, not today because i'm losing, then the game isn't right for me.
COH has always been release game, give it a year and it will be finished, it is how they have literally done it for 3 games now, that should not be a surprise to anyone.
I think the main problem is lack of communication and understanding by the playerbase. The game needed to do better to say it's in development and they want to build it with the community piece by piece at every stage so they can make the best game. I don't care what anyone says I game development iterative building with the community is the best way to build a game when there's so many different opinions and styles to consider. They release the game early access and the campaign is undercooked, there's missing units, missing sound, graphics are not finished, modes are not all in the game, hotkeys are still locked somewhat, which is not a problem because it's in development but t he players wanted the finished game and rejected their iteration approach and now the game is suffering for it. They could have kept campaign hidden until next year or released it to a small number for NDA testing, so Frost Giant also misunderstood what the playerbase actually wanted. But the problem with that is if they did keep it closed down we wouldn't see the game until 2026 most likely and it might be a worse game for that.
I still see the potential in it because I use linux and I don't want to download battlenet and play starcraft, I want to play something similar but new and stormgate is that game outside of every RTS out there, this one is the closest. But with all the doomers around and negativity, the lies being spread and the lack of understanding about in development games and being influx if the community continues to reject the game then it's over, and we'll be playing starcraft 2 forever.
There has been changes though, they've updated their roadmap and are doing things backwards as a response to the community negativity, they're releasing 3v3 but locking it under NDA because it's going to be in an early stage just like campaign and they don't want the community to kill the game from this point, but that's exactly what will happen, even though we got a massive graphics update that makes it look night and day and a huge balance patch that's changed a lot, mind you it's technically only been over a month since the game released, were on good pace, but it's not up to the developers if the game will succeed or not since they're doing things fine in my opinion, just give them feedback and time to grow, but if the community and player base reject it then that's the will of the players and we'll not be playing this game once it shuts down, sad really...
Unfortunately I feel the damage is done with Stormgate, the other games you mentioned CoH, Age of Mythology, event SC2 in alpha was that they already had a fanbase and they had the franchise. Stormgate was heavily relying on the SC community jumping onto it but if anything it's just bolstered SC2 and BW. Unless SC2 suddenly just closes down I can't see SG doing much. It will be telling for if the next EWC has a stormgate tournament with big money, if it's just SC2 again, I can see SG closing shop pretty early on
The Campaign is so damn bad. Seeing as Campaign is the main intro to people playing RTS games…it basically singed its own death warrant.
Not to mention that they were just trying to copy SC2 and WC3 campaigns.
Yeah, it is unbelievable how atrocious the campaign is.
I halfway expected the devs to come out a day later to say: Haha, April Fools Joke, here is the real campaign.
EVERYTHING sucks in the campaign, everything is done worse than in WC3 + SC1 + SC2. And not only stuff that costs money (like cinematics), dialogue, characters, story...
Sound design, optics - everything is so bad, WC3 and SC1 was doing a better job.
That honestly does not sound bad on paper. I love those Campaigns, but the problem is these campaign missions feel way weaker than those Blizzard missions. Less creative and retreading on old ground. They don’t add anything new to the formula the way SC2 missions seemingly did so consistently. Beyond the terrible writing and story.
What i think about the game?
Idk, didnt play it yet, gonna wait for proper release and then well see.
For me, it's too much like WC3 for Starcraft fans, and too much like Starcraft for WC3 fans. It tries to be everything, but ended up being unlikeable for everyone unfortunately. I really hoped it would be a true next gen RTS title, but alas, back to SC2 for me, and hope Microsoft picks that back up, or invests heavily into a SC3. Neither will happen, but as it is, nothing else is scratching that itch
Don't get your hopes up for any good blizzard game.
look elsewhere.
my favorite game for 13 years only has a few hundred regular players. and we need 20 people for a match so it can still work for a 1v1 i guess. you have a more personal community playing with the same people. check out natural selection 2. its a rts/fps hybrid unlike anything you have ever seen.
As a Protoss player, I was hoping for a faction in Stormgate that somewhat resembles Protoss, specifically the troop deployment style of Warpgates, which has always been my favorite mechanic of that race. Stormgate doesn't have anything like that; the faction that seems to have similarities to the Protoss are the Angels. While they look good from an aesthetic point of view, the faction feels cheesy, and ironically, as a Protoss player, I don't like that they are so cheesy. Literally breaking the game and attacking with the 'command center' feels like a playstyle without strategy, just going to your opponent and winning through brute force... that's not for me, and I think very few people will enjoy that style of play, specifically the more casual players. It's like the game developers took the cannon rush and applied it to the whole faction, literally the most boring and bad strategy of Protoss.
In conclusion, I feel that Stormgate is not for me.
I'm not sure whether the campaign is bad because it was made rushed and/or under crunch, or if the map designers didn't know how to create a satisfying campaign that introduces players to the game. Either way, it's a bad sign when I'd rather replay Crossfire Legion's campaign, or even Act of Aggression's, than the current Stormgate missions.
I'd say they should overhaul or even scrap the existing missions and focus on building co-op and multiplayer content in the meantime, while they make the campaign actually worth playing.
The only problem is that people thought Early Access meant it was done. So many people expected near finished campaign missions while all the dev blogs talked about how we were going to be going along for the ride in development and that at LEAST a year would be spent in EA. They clearly stated the map editor wasn't coming for months after EA release why would people think the game would be polished when it doesn't even have a complete map editor? Criticize the game all you want but there is a difference between criticism, even unconstructive criticism, and unfounded expectations. "Next gen RTS" did not mean EA launch was going to be polished.
>inb4 cope
I tried to play it, but it didn't immediately capture me and I felt like it was hard to get into. There is also something about the aesthetics/style of the game that just doesn't resonate with me. Maybe I've just gotten old or have played too many games, but design-wise feels like something kids might like, not me. The Vanguard robotic style imo is just so meh, I don't think it's badass.
I hated Stormgate when I first tried it. Then I kind of fell in love. Then when the initial love wore off, I was left with a cool, flawed game that i'm honestly hoping will get its shit together.
this is the diablo 4 of rts
Как же ты шпаришь. Мое почтение
They really went with angles vs demons ...
And also too much tournaments before game even available to public ( for example on Beta I had 30 wins in straight, they close it and only PROS of sC2 were competing on the stage, so basically I played the game and that was it... ) and too much of it everywhere, can imagine me going on ranked and ppl be like oh you copy this one you copy that one ...
This game has lot of bugs... Problems not fixed for months
Plastic texture that looked 🤢
Menu looks like StarCraft, even the factions looks the same
Terrans=Vangard, Zerg=Inferno, Protoss= that angelic faction 😅
Campaign looks bad, there is no save/load system
Brutal dif. Is easy
If everything is not fixed until the end of the year or the next... It's finished...
And Don't listen to game journalist like IGN, they are paid for it...
Infernal’s are also more like orcs than zerg in terms of gameplay and undead in terms of graphics, main similarity is that both have some kind of a “creep mechanic,” and celestials only look like protoss, but play more like zerg/undead
It's mostly the combination of more races that gives something From everyone...
But they Are still the same
I've watched a few diff streamers over the last year play this game. I've heard the claims. It was supposed to be advancing the rts genre to the next level. But in reality, it feels lacking anything new or standout besides maybe an easier skill floor than sc2 which isn't something the more competitive crowd cares about.
Beyond that, it is "different" but still largely the same as a wc3 or sc2 gameplay. An alternate set of units, but plays the same. No giant new advancement like was promised. So... just like how my friends hyped up Iron Man as "best superhero movie ever" when It came out, it had self-created (and playtester boosted) shoes to fill. And like Iron Man, proved (to me) to be solid, but not the "better than everything" it was supposed to be. That makes you view things as worse than it actually is.
If they really wanted a next gen rts, then look to Tom Clancy's writing. Imagine playing Civ, but you actually jump in and fight the battles both as 3rd person and as rpg 1st person simultaneously. That is next gen rts. If you aren't delivering something along those lines, don't claim you will. If all you're really offering is an alternative for the competitive playtesters... why spend all the time, money to get the same as you can get just continuing to play aoe2, aom, sc2, wc3? There is no real incentive unless they're burned out of those games. And even then, you are no better an option than one of the others listed.
Dude talk about hitting a nail on its head. This game is not bad, it is very unpolished and I guess shown before it should of been, but personally I liked the early looks. Instead of cooking for years with no outside feedback.
The campaign is meh, but I can see the ideas.
The co-op is actually fun, I lose often and still learning
The 1v1 is great I've not had any issues with dogs like everyone else has, just position better, I feel like people just can't adapt to anything, and if this game doesn't drop exactly what they should do into their laps, they just go EWWWW stupid broken!
3v3 will definitely be in rough state. As for balance complains... This is something that will have to happen early on in PvP RTS. So I disagree with them waiting on 3v3 and co-op since it was prerequisite for 3v3. They have to go on with it. Campaign was mistake but the rest of it has to come out raw so they get enough feedback and testing. Bad metas need to be found and dealt with etc.
Gonna be honest, using StarCraft 2's alpha as a reason to be less skeptical of Stormgate is a really bad example Imo.
To me personally SC2's alpha looked way more fun and visually readable than the actual release.
So I guess we're hoping Battle Aces will blow up?
Or ZeroSpace come next year
you did not talk about the rts renaissance and the stiff competition, there are many many games will come out in a short period of time and the rts gaming community as a whole is not that big, no it is not just up to the developers, others should fail too in order this to be a big hit, you did not talk about the lack of innovation that other new rts has/will have etc. this was a very very undercooked video, stormgate needs a miracle
Imo immortals gates of pyre is the closest to starcaft of all the rts games in dev I've seen.
the problem with actual games is that "you can see the population"
and then people go "hmm, not enough, better stay where i am"
rinse and repeat with new plausible players and then the players in the game say "same people over and over, this is boring, bye"
and it keeps going till it dies...
I just played an epic game of sc2. Um. Yes I have stormgate installed.
Cosmonarchy brood war beats stormgate like it stole sumthin
Я только щас понял что ты бассет. Офигеть.
I have to agree. I am campaign and coop player. yeah I was appalled by the graphics, yeah I see hints of girlbossing and DEI in in the game but nothing serious.
I played the 3 free mission 3 times. I maxed my free champion to max level in coop. I kinda liked the experience but now there is nothing to do...
I dont remember about SC1 but I think the game started with 20 missions, Sc2 25 maybe? here we have 3...
I dont even have free comapnder from each race to try in coop.
If they fix the graphics /cos it need more/ add 20 missions, add a free commander from each race I can see myself spending money and time in the game.
frost giants tried to make a game under the promise of being better than sc2(not straight up said, but heavily implied), because "the people who made sc2 now work for us", and we all hoped for a great game...
and right now, storm gate looks like an older game than sc2, the game lacks an identity, it lacks the charm and inspiration the starcraft world had...
you have budget terran, budget zerg and budget protoss without any of the charm that the original sc races had.
I still remember their trailer when they claimed the units would move so much smother thanks to a new engine they are working with, and it's still not as good as how sc2 units feel.
They created sg for be a reason to stop play starcraft 2 ,they make a copy of sc2
Concord wasn't that terrible as a game. But it was just not good enough for the type of game it was trying to sell itself as.
Also the main problem I have with Stormgate is honestly how it controls. The AI is just not right. The types of plays that are possible falls far short of both Starcraft 1, 2, and even Warcraft 1,2,3.
I like action oriented games more. I want to be able to control my units well and win that way.
The game reminds me more of Diablo 3 than Starcraft
They need to scrap the units, its the reason why they struggle with balance.
I'll be honest.
The devs themselves shot this game in the foot on several occasions, and then double-tapped its kneecaps for good measure.
The game is advertised as "NEXT GEN RTS" while it miserably fails to measure up to 14 years old Starcraft 2 and 22 years old Warcraft 3, all the while taking from these titles massively. Let's be honest - if you advertise yourself as NEXT GEN, the next gen is what people are going to expect. And if you under-deliver - you will feel the pain of it.
It overfocuses on multiplayer, while repeating the same formula as StarCraft and Warcraft - to the point that units are designed AROUND APM and micro. Basic "not terran marine" gets speed boost when bursting to encourage micro in the same way people micro SC2 Terran Marines. The "not siege tank" is designed around being carried by "not medivac" while in siege mode, which was a much maligned gimmick of SC2 at the time as well.
Coming from overfocus on multiplayer - is the mentioned over-reliance on pros. Let's be real - multiplayer is NOWHERE near as big as some people make it out to be. If you look at games such as Dawn of War 2, Age of Empires 2, Company of Heroes 2 - only 2-15% of players played multiplayer with ANY degrees of consistency - and pros within that already tiny niche are only few % themselves.
Pandering to these kinds of groups brutally SHOVES the game into obscurity - because RTS games already have a notoriously harsh barrier of entry for multplayer.
Classic RTS games also have the problem with newbie expectations. It is a strategy game, right? But what strategy is there. When your average person thinks strategy, they don't think "ah yes, 3 million APM and 50 memorised opening builds perfectred to 0.01 of a second, or else you effectively lose the game within 2 minutes, and then you need to perfectly babysit every unit, because they are unable to find their own arse in the dark, with a map and a flashlight in tow". No, that is kind of monkey reflex bollocks belongs with arcade games or shooters.
The unappealing art style is a constant point of contention - it looks like something between despised REFORGED and some mobile shovelware. Again - it does not measure up to a 14 year old SC2... I mean, really? And let's be honest - spectacle is a big part of the game's appeal... And it is... not there. There is no sense of scale - we still suffer from "infantryman bigger than a tank" syndrome, units still mindlessly exchanging blow like static pawns, unless you manually micro. It does not showcase anything we didn't see before on graphical end... And by "before", I mean 14 years ago.
Another problem is lack of innovation - again, going back to NEXT GEN RTS - people were expecting something else than a soft re-hash of WC3 and SC2, with little to no new things around. And don't tell me about "worker units doing thins on their own" - that is such a basic stuff it could be modded into Warcraft 3.
I mean, really, this copies SC2 down to such elements as unit blobbing, stutter-shooting and ramp blocking. And campaign? First missions showed were basically carbon copies of WC3 human campaign. There is a fine line between paying homage to classics and threading a safe, though lazy path.